


Chronicle of a Kiss Foretold

by nausicaa_of_phaeacia



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Cheesy, F/M, Gabriel García Márquez references, Gen, Letters, Post-Episode: s02e14 Love in the Time of Hydra, Prompt Fic, Skye's huge crush on Coulson, The Playground's Kitchen (because where else), skoulsonfest2k15redux
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-26
Updated: 2015-07-26
Packaged: 2018-04-11 09:45:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4430561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nausicaa_of_phaeacia/pseuds/nausicaa_of_phaeacia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At the Retreat, Skye finds a book by García Márquez.<br/>At the Chinese village, she writes some letters.<br/>At the Playground's kitchen, Coulson is making pancakes.<br/>Stuff happens in-between.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chronicle of a Kiss Foretold

**Author's Note:**

  * For [zauberer_sirin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/gifts).



> Written for Day 7 of the Skoulsonfest2k15 Redux.  
> It fell a little on the bumpy and silly side. Still, I had fun. :)
> 
> Prompt:  
> [LOVE IN THE TIME OF HYDRA]
> 
> For zauberer_sirin.

The cabin is just too ... empty. Sure, it wasn't built as a holiday bungalow, but even though everything in and about it is nice and okay, Skye feels like having been put on a siding. She gets it, sure. Coulson is supposed to worry about other things, and she's supposed to find out more about her "gift". If only things weren't just so boring and the days not so long.

Skye feels as if everything she's doing around here is just a really badly executed déjà-vu: cooking encompasses no more than your regular five, six different dishes on repeat; she's definitely seen everything around the cabin, and she doesn't dare to video-call anyone anymore because she can see they're always trying really hard to squeeze her into their schedules (and when you're not supposed to hack, there's only so much entertainment a laptop will offer you when you're in a forest cabin).

She wonders what Bruce Banner spent his time doing when he was here, but yeah, scientists always find stuff to do, right? And she's pretty sure Cap was drawing, with all the art stuff he was allegedly interested in before the war broke out. Skye's good at a few things, but drawing's definitely not one of them (she remembers Sister Temperance's cruel smile telling her that you weren't supposed to draw any wings on cats), so what she does is basically finding some stuff to safely vibrate, then wandering around the cabin in the hope of finding something interesting. Not that developing her "gift" isn't exciting; it is. But there's only so much you can do when you feel completely drained from it after a few hours.

Things change a little when she decides to examine the cabin's one bookshelf. She finds her suspicions confirmed: books about art and photography and a MOMA museum catalog squeezed in between stuff about DNA research and enhanced human anatomy and also severely harmful chemical substances. There's one title, though, that stands out - it's a book called _Love in the Time of Cholera_ , written by some García Márquez. Suddenly, the name sounds familiar, and Skye's pretty sure she's seen some G. G. Márquez books around Coulson's office, at least two or three of them, something about solitude and whatnot.

Opening the book feels like she's doing something forbidden. Since it's the only novel in the cabin, she guesses she could just as well read it. The book is a little ragged; it's obvious it's been read more than once. A few pages in, Skye notices a few marks in the text, phrases that have been underlined, little doodles and notes in corners, the occasional (intentional, because completely symmetrical) dog-ear. She wonders who's read it before her, because Coulson doesn't seem like someone who mistreats his books by turning down its corners. When she gets to the ending and Florentino finally returns to Fermina, she finds a single folded sheet of paper between the book's last page and back cover.  
It says,

_SKYE,_

_I GUESS YOU'LL HAVE GOTTEN AROUND TO READING THIS BY NOW. I DON'T KNOW IF IT'S YOUR TASTE IN BOOKS, BUT I READ THIS WHEN I WAS HERE FOR A FEW DAYS AFTER THE MEMORY MACHINE. AT FIRST, I HADN'T PLANNED ON BRINGING ANYTHING, BECAUSE THE WHOLE POINT OF ESCAPING HERE AFTER EVERYTHING THAT HAD HAPPENED WAS TO BE ALONE SO I COULD FIGURE OUT HOW TO GO ON BEING WHAT I'D ENDED UP BEING AND MEDITATE ON MYSELF I GUESS (I SUPPOSE MAY COULD HAVE WORDED THIS A LOT SIMPLER). IN THE END, THIS BOOK TURNED OUT TO HELP ME BECOMING OKAY WITH WHO I AM NOW. AGAIN, I DON'T KNOW WHETHER YOU LIKED IT OR NOT, BUT TO ME, IT IS A BOOK ABOUT A SECOND CHANCE.  
TAKE CARE._

_PHIL COULSON_

***

Things have gotten so much more complicated now, she's gotten to know her mother, she's met Lincoln, she's still trying to find out what she's doing around here in the company of Raina and other apparently misled people with powers, and it's proving really hard to convince Gordon that she can't just snap all connections to "the outside world", meaning that she doesn't want to cut of all contact with her friends. She gets that _this_ is a secret location, but Gordon refuses to take any letters, let alone her anywhere.

If this were just a regular mountain place where you could still use your own stuff, she'd try and just hack her way out of the village's security system to try and at least get some e-mails to Coulson. That's not going to work without a laptop, though. After a few days, she thinks of the possibility that at least Jiaying or someone else who's important around here may have an outside connection via internet, because how would you assess your threats without online networking. It proves to be true: Jiaying _does_ , in fact, own and operate a netbook, but it proves to be fingerprint-protected. Skye's just lucky that there are no alarms set off when she's trying to hack her way into it one Tuesday night.

Finally, she figures, there must be some outgoing mail, too, like old-fashioned letters with stamps and stuff. She knows that some people who have been here for ages - Lincoln being one of them - have earned a more _trusted_ position and are allowed to send letters. The only thing she can try without being found out is trying to smuggle a letter to Coulson out in an envelope addressed to Lincoln's grandmother in the States. Whether it's going to reach him or not, she'll never know. Nevertheless, she keeps trying this for a few weeks. There are just too many things she wants to let him know about.

***

When everything is over and Coulson's lost half of a limb and her father's gone through T.A.H.I.T.I., she's forgotten about those letters completely. She's back at the Playground, after all, and Coulson and her are trying to build up this secret network-slash-undercover team, and she's flying him around in Lola and there are movie nights with Mack and everything is just back to the normal she knew.

There's one occasion upon which she's early to their partners-in-crime style undercover powered team meetings in Coulson's office. She's strolling around his desk, looking at his Cap memorabilia and Trip's Howling Commando equipment when she notices his books on the shelf and remembers the one García Márquez from the cabin she'd been carrying around at the village, having sort of accidentally smuggled it out from the retreat inside her jacket. The next day, when she knows Coulson to be discussing Lola with Mack, she sneaks back into his office to put it back. She figures he would like it to stand next to the others.

For some reason, she can't resist borrowing another one as she sneaks back out. Over weeks, she keeps repeating the process: _One Hundred Years of Solitude_ , _Nobody Writes to the General_ , _The General and His Labyrinth_ , _Leaf Storm_. Before, she'd never have guessed Coulson to read books like these. Now, that she's read them too, though, she feels like they tell her a little about him. He's treated all his books the way he's treated _Love in the Time of Cholera_ : everything full of small doodles and symmetrical dog-ears. 

When, finally, she gets to _Chronicle of a Death Foretold_ , she suddenly remembers the letters she's tried to send him from the village (Bayardo finally returns to Ángela, with all the letters she ever sent him sorted by date, bundled and unopened. She keeps wondering where those letters landed.

***

There's that one time she gets teamed up with Lincoln to try and recruit someone from Boston. On their way there, she asks him about his family, and he aims at telling her a funny story about his grandmother. He explains how during his first few weeks at S.H.I.E.L.D., after contacting her again, she kept complaining about how she got between ten and twenty letters addressed to someone nicknamed AC, and how the handwriting had been so different from Lincoln's. He accentuates how that's especially funny since his grandmother saved up all her complaints about those letters for months until she knew how to reach him. Skye doesn't laugh as much as he's expected, and he stops telling stories.

As soon as they return, Skye picks up _Chronicle_ from her nightstand and marches into Coulson's office, slamming the paperback onto his desk. He looks up at her questioningly, waiting for her to explain.

"You never told me you got them," she manages.  
"You never asked when you borrowed the others," he smirks. She raises her eyebrows. "Not that I mind," he added. "I was counting on you to read _Love in the Time_ at the cabin."  
"How would you know I'd be interested in it!," she almost shouts.  
"I didn't. I just figured you'd be happy to find a piece of fiction among everything else."  
She swallows.

"Did you read them at all?"  
"What, you mean Banner's research journals?"  
She frowns. He looks her in the eye for a slightly-too-long moment, then opens his drawer to produce a thin paper-brown folder. Her eyes widen.  
"How did you even ... ? I mean, how did they get to you?"  
"Skye. You know we had to monitor a lot of powered people and their connections to even get a few clues about where you were."  
"Doesn't look like that worked out, huh."

He makes a small clicking noise like he knows she kind of expected him to find her, like he's disappointed with himself, like his supposed to give great answers but all he can do is shrug his shoulders, because that's what he does. (Skye's never seen him shrug his shoulders.)

"Sorry," she mumbles. "I know you couldn't find me. That was Jiaying's whole point. I just thought you'd - you know, _tell me_ that you'd received them, after I got back to the Playground. That you'd read them."

 

***

When she wakes up at, like, five in the morning, after getting only about two hours of sleep (her mind still pirouetting around those letters), there's Coulson. In the kitchen. Making pancakes. When she accidentally brushes her hand against one of the red plastic chairs, he almost jumps.

"Morning," she opens, a little flustered. "Sorry."  
He smiles cautiously, then approaches her and the table with the pan.  
"I was going to write _sorry_ on this one, in sugar, but then I thought, you shouldn't do this when your handwriting is awful."  
"I've seen your handwriting. It's not _that_ awful. You should see mine, I write like a little girl."  
He flips the pancake onto one of the two prepared plates.  
"... How did you know I was going to be awake now?"  
"I didn't. But you often are."  
"How did you know I was going to be hungry, then?"  
He chuckles.  
"Nobody can resist my pancakes."

They eat in a weird silence, powdering the pancakes in sugar, sometimes accidentally meeting each other's eyes, exchanging smirks, because hey, you don't eat pancakes at your workplace kitchen every day at five-something in the morning, especially not I'm-sorry-I-didn't-tell-you-I-received-the-I-miss-you-a-lot-letters-you-addressed-to-your-colleague's-grandma pancakes.

The occasional smirking breaks out into occasional chuckling. As soon as they're finished, Skye starts washing the dishes, maybe to hide her face from Coulson a little, maybe to give him a little space to hide his. When she's done and about to thank him, he suddenly sort of clasps her into his arms and she feels wrapped in _Coulson_. He's actually wearing a pretty soft T-shirt and Skye sort of doesn't mind at all, not even how cold his prostethic hand is on her back right now. 

To every hug in your life, there is a weird moment where usually, both people sort of just realize it's exactly the right time to stop hugging. Sometimes, someone misses that point and there's either a weird extraction or a weird gasping for air to follow. In this case, Skye's pretty sure they've missed that moment quite a while ago. And she's fine with that, because Coulson, contrary to all previous hugs, doesn't seem to stir even the tiniest bit.

"I missed you too," he tells her shoulder. "I wish I could have answered."  
"So you did read them." She extracts herself a little to be able to look at him. He smiles, and suddenly it feels like he's far too close to her own smile to be even remotely professional about this.  
"Who wouldn't read smuggled love letters from a fellow agent undercover at a secret Inhumans base at a Chinese village?" The trademark smirk.  
"Hey, they weren't -"  
He kisses her.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading!  
> Sorry if I screwed up the pacing. It happens.
> 
> P.S. I _will_ upload something for day 5 and 6 of the fest, too. Things just got really busy around here. ;)


End file.
